Super Mario Collection Tops Charts With 300,000

Nintendo celebrated Super Mario's 25th anniversary with wallpapers and more via a special promotional site. All the work seems to have paid off.

If Nintendo's goal with all the Super Mario Bros. 25th anniversary festivities from the past couple of months was to sell a ton of copies of Super Mario Collection, they've managed just that. In its first week Collection sold 308,000 units.

Super Mario Collection is basically just a Wii version of Super Mario All-Stars, but Nintendo prepared a collectors package with bonus goodies like a soundtrack and history book. The game sold for a budget ¥2,500 and is a limited time production.

With a debut in first place this week, Mario did something no other game has been able to do since mid September: push Pokemon Black & White from the top spot. Black & White placed second this week with 82,000 sales bringing its total to 4,243,000.

The top 20 was packed with new releases, primarily on PS3, which saw Naruto Ultimate Storm 2 in 3rd, Vanquish in 4th, Medal of Honor in 6th, and FIFA 11 World Class Soccer in 9th.

Move debuted over the week. While it's unclear how many units of the motion controller device sold Beat Sketch!, Big 3 Gun Shooting, Resident Evil 5 Alternative Edition Special Pack, and Sports Champion all made it into the top 20. The first two are available solo and bundled with Move. The new version of RE5 is a bundle consisting of RE5 Alternative Edition (Gold Edition overseas) and Move.

Here's the full top 20 for 10/18 to 10/24 as passed along at 4gamer:

• 1. Super Mario Collection Special Pack (Nintendo, Wii): 307,755
• 2. Pokemon Black & White (Nintendo, DS): 81,915 (4,243,312)
• 3. Naruto Ultimate Storm 2 (Namco Bandai, PS3): 63,675
• 4. Vanquish (Sega, PS3): 48,318
• 5. Kirby's Epic Yarn (Nintendo, Wii): 35,633 (127,913)
• 6. Medal of Honor (Electronic Arts, PS3): 25,365
• 7. Lord of Arcana (Square Enix, PSP): 24,939 (94,872)
• 8. Beat Sketch! (Sony, PS3): 22,165
• 9. FIFA 11 World Class Soccer (Electronic Arts, PS3): 18,995
• 10. Wii Party (Nintendo, Wii): 15,895 (1,138,627)
• 11. Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded (Square Enix, DS): 14,995 (141,748)
• 12. Big 3 Gun Shooting (Namco Bandai, PS3): 12,653
• 13. No More Heroes 2 (Marvelous, Wii): 11,373
• 14. Vanquish (Sega, X360): 11,204
• 15. Red Dead Redemption (Take Two, PS3): 10,454 (107,347)
• 16. PS Move Resident Evil 5 Alternative Edition Special Pack (Sony, PS3): 9,399
• 17. Medal of Honor (Electronic Arts, X360) 6,958
• 18. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G PSP the Best Reprint (Capcom, PSP): 6,371 (456,266)
• 19. Sports Champion (Sony, PS3): 6,349
• 20. Macross F (Namco Bandai, PS3): 6,123 (176,892)

Despite more than half the chart consisting of new releases, hardware sales actually fell across the board. PSP and DS were, as usual, neck and neck for the top spot. PS3 outsold Wii nearly two to one despite Mario's success. It looks like Mario's buyers in large part already owned Wii.

Here's the hardware chart, with last week's sales in parentheses:

• 1. PSP: 32,591 (37,127)
• 2. PS3: 20,128 (22,201)
• 3. DSi LL: 15,819 (21,084)
• 4. DSi: 14,703 (20,749)
• 5. Wii: 11,971 (12,810)
• 6. DS Lite: 3,887 (5,268)
• 7. X360: 2,162 (2,342)
• 8. PS2: 1,222 (1,715)
• 9. PSP go: 924 (1,590)